Weekly Legal digest 29.11.2018

“I think cryptocurrencies will exist, they will become more and more widespread, but they will be part of an ecosystem”, — El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz.

USA

The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Jay Clayton reiterated the regulator’s strict stance on ICO compliance to CNBC.

“Many ICOs that you see and you talk about, they are securities and if you’re going to offer and sell securities, you have to do so in compliance with our laws.

The best ways to raise funding with an ICO is through a private placement or registration with the entity. However, if they register with the SEC, they have to provide financial statements and will be required to disclose certain information about their activities”, — Jay Clayton.

“Smart contracts are being used to drive further automation in our markets and may have an impact across a range of economic activities. This primer is focused on explaining smart contracts, exploring how they may impact our markets and highlighting potentially novel risks and challenges.”, — Daniel Gorfine, LabCFTC’s director.

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The State of Ohio allowed businesses to pay taxes with BTC. Now you can pay everything from cigarette sales taxes to employee withholding taxes with cryptocurrency. Companies only need to register on the website OhioCrypto.com. The acceptance of crypto for tax payments will only apply to businesses. As for individual taxpayers, the state has plans to extend this offering to them in the future.

This initiative is of great importance for Bitcoin enthusiasts as it marks one of the first governments in the world to accept cryptocurrency.

For the first time in the list’s history, bitcoin addresses associated with the individuals will be included with other identifying information, such as physical addresses, post office boxes, email addresses and aliases.

Germany

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) is planning to fight taxevasion schemes by using blockchain.

Following the major European tax fraud scheme CumEx-Files, the BMWi has suggested that distributed ledger technology (DLT) is capable of making the tax system more efficient in terms of fraud prevention.

Great Britain

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is now conducting crypto-related investigations of 50 firms which it believes are operating illegally in a financial services capacity without the organization’s permission.

Since May (when it had looked at only 24 firms) of this year the number of such companies has doubled.

Singapore

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) which falls under Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information will offer seed funding to players in the media and IT sector.

In order to obtain seed funding from the IMDA, the platforms to be developed must meet certain criteria and this includes a capacity to connect with other blockchain communities spread across the globe.

Bockchain adoption has largely been restricted to the financial sector and there are few, if any, large-scale successful cases that exist outside banking and insurance”, — IMDA.

Uganda

The government of Uganda is going to regulate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as crypto-related schemes are seemingly on the rise in the country.

“In October, Cabinet approved the National Payment System Bill. We intend to bring it to Parliament next month so that it caters for all these forms of digital financial transactions”, — David Bahati, Uganda’s Minister of State for Finance.